From Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The topic of changing the breed of a character is very controversial among the genre fans. For example, many Harry Potter fans in a full-grown magician are in the news that a black actor (Paapa Essedu) plays in the upcoming Harry Potter TV show Professor Snape (a figure originally on the Alan Rickman screen). It is easy to consider this as a modern phenomenon, but the change of characters due to racist concerns goes back to the golden age of television. A typical example: the producers of the Star Trek: The next generation The episode “Booby Trap” changed the character of Navid Daystrom in Leah Brahms because the actor was white.
Navid Daystrom became Leah Brahms
If you are a big TNG fan, Leah Brahms does not need a big introduction. It is the warp kerneleie, which Geordi la Forge falls in love after he has recreated it on the HoloDeck, and when they later meet in the meat room, the arms are the greatest indictment in the cosmos. However, what most fans do not know is that Brahms’ character was originally designed as a navid day current, a descendant of the black character Doctor Richard Daystrom, but these plans had to be changed because the show had already occupied the white actor Susan Gibney for the part.
So that you can fully understand this, we have to carry out a letter Star Trek History lesson: in The original series Episode “The Ultimate Computer”, we are presented with Doctor Richard Daystrom that uses the company to test its fully automated M-5 multitron system. Because that were the 1960s Sci-fiThe new computer that can lead the ship itself takes over the ship and even destroys several star fleet ships that are in the area for war games. Kirk saves the day, but not before we find out that this drama was caused by Daystrom, the human engrams put in the circuit boards of his shiny new toy.
Doctor Daystrom’s only appearance in TOS was that of a neurotic and short-sighted man, whose technological abbreviations were killed by Starfleet employees. Nevertheless, the prestigious Daystrom Institute was named after him, presumably because of his earlier work on Duotronic Computers and not the whole crazy AI thing. And the Tng The producers originally wanted to consolidate their new spin -off connection to the earlier show by recording a holographic version of Navid Daystrom, a descendant of Richard Daystrom, in “Booby Trap”.
It’s a good idea on paper. Star Trek fans were generally satisfied with the various possibilities of how TNG was associated with TOS, to which Dr. McCoy belonged. Spockand Scotty. Therefore, the authors of “Booby Trap” believed that a new genius engineering would lead a descendant of this unique character from Kirk’s era for a funny Easter egg. Unfortunately, the casting department did not play the connection to the original episode, so that they did not notice that a navid daystrom would mean a descendant of Richard Daystrom would mean filling a black actor.
They had already poured the white actor Susan Gibney into the role, so that “Navid Daystrom” became Leah Brahms. Fortunately, the show held its connection to the TOS character by making Brahms the graduate of the Day Stream Institute. She never created a killer ski or something, but she act Convert the lovable geordi la Forge for a few episodes into one of the creepiest boys in the galaxy.
Unfortunately, Brahms never submitted a Tech Support -Ticket after Geordi was broken. If so, you may have asked her a very useful question: “Did you try to switch off your incel and then switch on again?”
